Tortilla Paraguaya

Gee, can you guess where these came from?

When I was a volunteer in Paraguay, I had these about every day. They were my salvation. My host mama (shown at left) deep fried them in lard over a charcoal brazier, which was pretty impressive. Dropping it into a saucepan of hot vegetable oil just doesn't capture the essence of the tortilla paraguaya...

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of flour (either white wheat flour, or manioca --yucca-- flour)
• 3 eggs
• A little (2 teaspoons) of fine salt
• 1 cup or less of milk
• Cheese: about a half cup of mozzerella or whatever you like
• (As desired, finely chopped scallions, tomato, and/or bell pepper)

Steps:

Mix eggs. Add milk and salt. Add flour and everything else. Mix it all well.

Meanwhile, get some oil (~1/4 - 1/2 inch deep) in a sauce pan very heated. Carefully pour some of this mix into the oil, until there is a pancake sized quantity of dough frying in the oil. Flip when the bottom/sides are deep golden brown. It turns out that if the oil is really hot, then then tortillas aren't greasy at all!! So, when the tortilla is uniformly brown on the outside, and the insides are somewhat solid, take it out of the oil, and lay it somewhere to dry and cool. Tortilla are best served warm.